by Gene Riehl
I grabbed my binoculars from the passenger seat, swung them up in time to get a good look at his face. His nose was healing, I saw, but still pretty ugly. I hoped it hadn’t stopped hurting, as he began to walk toward the zoo entrance.
“I’ve got an eye on the van,” Brodsky told me from somewhere beyond our position, “if you want to take him inside.”
I grabbed a straw hat from my surveillance bag, slapped a quick brown goatee on my chin.
“I’m on my way. I’ll call you if I lose him.”
I mingled the best I could in the straggly pedestrian flow, past the series of small ponds on our left on the way to the nearby south entrance, but made sure to keep Crown in view. Except on TV or in the movies, losing sight of the package is almost always the end of the surveillance, and people can do the damndest things when you aren’t watching.
This time the problem was speed.
Crown’s long legs were gobbling up the pavement much faster than the meandering bunch I was using as a shield. I had to pick up my pace as well, even if it meant risking him noticing. Fortunately the walkway stretching into the park was a wide and straight one, and I could see Crown easily from thirty yards behind him. He’d hurried past the information booth on the right without a glance, which was no great surprise. He knew where he was going, of course, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t come to see the animals.
We passed the big restaurant on our left and made straight for the monkey island about two hundred yards dead ahead. I hung back a little farther, careful not to jam up with him if the monkey exhibit was his destination.
It wasn’t, I saw a moment later.
Crown made a right turn toward the Think Tank—the animal-cognition center—at the east edge of the zoo. I had to hustle to catch sight of him as he veered right again and strode to the great cats exhibit on Lion-Tiger Hill. This time he did stop, and so did I, a couple dozen yards away and safely screened from his view by a thicket of bamboo and a small grove of Himalayan pines.
Thank God for the evergreens, I thought. At this time of year the skyscraper oak trees were completely bare, offered me no protection at all. Crown stood directly in front of the low wall dividing the lions from those the big cats wouldn’t mind eating. He was joined by scores of tourists attracted to the power and beauty of the beasts as they lounged beyond their pondlike safety moat.
I watched as one of the cats—a male huge through the shoulders—strolled along the other side of the moat, swinging his eyes from side to side as though counting the house for this afternoon’s performance. His golden-brown head stopped as he seemed to recognize Jerry Crown, one predator to another.
Crown turned and walked to the small plaza directly across from the lions, an area filled with tables and chairs. Every table was occupied. He moved to the nearest one, stood like the lion as he stared at the family seated there. The father looked up, then gathered his wife and two small children and hurried away. Jerry Crown took the father’s chair, sat and stared at the lions. Waiting, I hoped, for the someone who pulled his strings.
I wedged myself into the three-deep crowd still gawking at the lions, out of Jerry Crown’s sight line. The blue-black sky began to drizzle. Around me umbrellas popped open, a few at first, then a forest of them. Another break for me. Even someone searching for me would have no chance to get a look at my face. I peeked past a red, yellow, and blue golf umbrella. Jerry Crown was still alone.
I raised the collar of my rain jacket, glanced at the same lions Crown was looking at. Unlike his fascination with Crown, the big male showed absolutely no interest in me. I moved a step or two closer to Crown’s table and waited for something to happen.
Three and a half minutes later it did.
A second man walked past Jerry Crown’s table, paused for an instant to pull his gray fedora closer to his eyes against the suddenly slanting rain, before moving on. As he walked away, Crown rose and followed him. I couldn’t see the other man’s face, but there was something about his rigid posture and the way he walked that I recognized. A moment later the back of my neck began to tingle as I realized why it was so familiar.
It couldn’t be, I told myself. It can’t possibly be.
I stepped back a few feet, ready to hurry to a position the two of them would have to pass to get wherever they were going.
I saw Crown following the second man, neither of them in an apparent hurry, just a couple of guys enjoying a day at the zoo. A dozen steps farther on, the second man stopped and turned back in the direction of Crown without actually looking at him. In that moment I had a perfect view of the newcomer’s face, directly into his eyes. I flinched away from the unexpected contact, but Kevin Finnerty did not appear to notice.
TWENTY-FIVE
My mind went blank. It could not be Kevin Finnerty, but it was.
No matter how impossibly absurd, the assistant director in charge of the bureau’s flagship field office was meeting with a professional killer. A red-hot flash of rage climbed up the back of my neck and exploded in the center of my brain. Before I could stop myself I went after them.
But two steps later the cell phone in my pocket began to vibrate.
Brodsky. Had to be. I wanted to keep going but I couldn’t.
The sheriff was there to watch my back, I couldn’t possibly ignore him. I sidestepped behind a huge yellow umbrella and retreated to the bamboo thicket, where Finnerty and his goon wouldn’t be able to see or hear me. I pulled the phone from my pocket, hit the call button.
“Get out of there,” Brodsky snapped. “We’ve got counter.”
“Two units,” the sheriff told me when we got back to his Buick in the parking lot. “Brown van to our right, light blue Ford sedan in the row ahead of us. Next to the black Range Rover.”
I saw the Ford sedan immediately, but it took me a moment to locate the van near the end of the row we were in. A drab brown commercial van with a magnetized sign sticking to the passenger door.
“Yankee Drain Cleaning?” I said. “That the one?”
He nodded.
“How’d you spot them?” FBI agents are trained to spot countersurveillance, but it takes a lot of practice. Even for an ex-L.A. cop, Brodsky had done well to pick them up. “Besides the sign on the door, I mean. We use the same thing on our own vans. Drain cleaners one day, roofers the next. You must’ve used them in the P.D.”
“Everybody does.”
He looked out the window, spoke without turning back to me.
“Two men left the Ford just after you followed Crown toward the gate. They didn’t look like tourists to me, so I checked around the lot for their mother ship. The drain-cleaning van caught my eye right away.”
“Except for the sign it looks pretty ordinary to me.”
“See the ladder? Strapped to the top?”
“Lots of trucks carry ladders.”
“Wired with antenna cable? Running from the rear of the ladder to a through-hole just above the back door?” He looked at me. “Not a lot of people would notice, but not a lot of people have rigged the same setup.”
“The ladder’s an antenna. Should have caught that myself.” I looked at the truck. “So who are they?”
“I guess that depends on who you saw inside with Jerry Crown.”
I told him. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“That’s all I get? Did you understand what I just said?”
“I’m stunned. Is that what you’d like to hear?” Brodsky shook his head. “I’ve been on the job too long for that. Takes a lot more to surprise me these days.” He paused, looked at the truck, then at the Ford from which the two men had left to follow me inside. “You don’t recognize the vehicles.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I haven’t been to our surveillance off-site for a year and a half, not since Finnerty made me a supervisor. I have no idea what the special operations group is driving these days.”
“How about the bureau radio in your car? Maybe you can catch them talking to
each other.”
“Could have done that a few years ago, but it’s a lot different now. The SOG people use secure frequencies to keep away from crooks with scanners. They’ve got too many channels for me to sort through, and they’re very careful to stay off the air unless they absolutely have to communicate.”
“Maybe Finnerty’s out here working a case.”
“Jerry Crown’s a murderer, a torturer. The only business the bureau would have with him is taking him off the street.” I stared through the windshield at the rain that had suddenly gotten worse. “I didn’t get the feeling they were in there to arrange a surrender.”
Again we fell silent, and I used the pause to begin doubting myself. Already wondering if I could possibly have seen what I did. And detecting the countersurveillance didn’t help, either.
“Let’s give them a test,” I said. “I’ll go for a little drive and you can watch what happens.”
“The van’s an electronics base unit. It won’t follow you. And the Ford’s still empty.”
“Could be another unit out here, though, or more than one. At least a hundred vehicles in this lot. No telling who they might be.” I reached for the door handle. “Call me on your cell when I get to my car. We’ll keep the line open till we finish.”
He nodded. I got out of his Buick, walked back to my Caprice, climbed in, and started the engine. My cell phone vibrated before I could back out.
“Ready?” I asked him.
“Go.”
I backed out of my space, headed toward the exit out of the parking lot, paused when I got to the frontage road to give a watcher time to catch up, then turned left with the flow of traffic back out toward the zoo’s main entrance.
I watched my rearview mirror, saw three cars and a pickup truck make the same turn behind me. No help. Too many vehicles. Nobody’d send four units after one car in an enclosed situation like this. I checked for oncoming traffic, saw a gap, and flipped a sudden U-turn, started back toward Brodsky as I watched the drivers who’d been behind me as they passed. No professional would duplicate my change of direction, I didn’t even bother looking for that, but radios would be used. It wasn’t likely, but microphones might flash into view before disappearing just as quickly.
I caught nothing as I went by. If it happened, I didn’t see it. I wanted to be reassured, but knew better. Most FBI surveillance agents use microphones built into the visor above the windshield, and the ones who don’t are careful to keep their mikes below window level.
“I didn’t see anything,” Brodsky told me over our open phone connection.
“What about brake lights?” No matter how well trained you are, it’s easy to hit the brakes when your package does something sudden or unusual. A sure way to get yourself burned.
“Nothing.”
“You make a note of the cars?” In case the same ones came back to the parking lot while we were still there.
“Of course.”
“One more try, then. This time I’ll take the bridge back to Adams Mill Road, do another U-turn.”
“Roger.”
I slowed down to cover the few hundred yards to the small bridge across Rock Creek, then hit the gas and sped across the bridge. On the other side I slowed again. One car appeared behind me, then two. I let them catch up before accelerating. Just before I got to Adams Mill, I cut another U-turn, right in front of an oncoming red SUV. I heard the driver’s angry honk, saw in the mirror his uplifted finger. I noted the two cars that had been behind me across the bridge, a white Lexus coupe, a dark blue something-or-other sedan. Again I looked for microphones, again I saw nothing. I watched the cars until they disappeared from view on their way to Adams Mill Road. Then I went back to Brodsky, stayed in my car, and used the phone to talk to him.
“I’m not sure,” I told him, “but I didn’t see anything obvious.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Got any ideas?”
“Do you know what Finnerty drives?”
“Black Mercury Marquis, if he’s using his bucar. Big four-door. I don’t know about his POA, his personally owned car.” But I realized what Brodsky was suggesting. “I’ll cruise the lot to see if I can find the Marquis. We might as well sit on both of them, Crown and Finnerty. Follow the one the drain-cleaning van takes out of here.”
We kept the line open while I looked for Finnerty’s black Mercury. It didn’t take long to find it. The big sedan was only fifty yards away, in the very back row. I told Brodsky, then pulled my Caprice into a parking space where I could see the ADIC’s car in my rearview mirror. I turned the engine off and slouched in the seat. The rain had stopped for a change, but the temperature had dropped, cold enough now to snow. I reached up and adjusted the mirror to give me the best view of Finnerty’s car, then settled back to wait. It was my first chance to reflect on what I’d seen.
There had to be an explanation, one that made more sense than what it looked like: that Kevin Finnerty was out here working with a killer for hire. That the ADIC was seriously off the rails, sanctioning murder, like a real-life “M” in a James Bond movie.
But Brodsky’s suggestion that Finnerty might be legitimately working with Crown was a tempting one to entertain anyway, given the alternatives. Could it be their meeting had nothing whatsoever to do with Judge Brenda Thompson? I was shaking my head even before the question had time to register.
For starters, Kevin Finnerty didn’t work cases, hadn’t been on the street for thirty-five years. Not since the late sixties, at least, when J. Edgar Hoover singled him out of a herd of young fireballs and elevated him directly to headquarters, to direct important bureau programs at first, then back to the field to head up the most important field offices, and finally back to Washington to become an assistant director by the time he was thirty. In the years since then, Finnerty had made himself the second most powerful FBI man in history. The president may have appointed our director, but even the director understands who really runs the show.
I tried another scenario, just for size.
Say Brenda Thompson had gone on her own to the president. Say she told him about Crown, about some kind of dreadful problem she was having with Jerry Crown. Say the president had ordered Finnerty to take care of it secretly. That would make the two guys from the blue Ford the ADIC’s bodyguards, here to protect him in a dangerous mission. That would make the brown drain-cleaning van a bureau listening station, here for the sole purpose of recording the meeting.
Pretty damned improbable, I admitted, but certainly not impossible. Brodsky and I were here to catch Crown. Could it be possible that Finnerty was trying to do the same thing?
“Crown’s out,” the sheriff said over our open phone connection. “On the way to his car.” He paused. “Unlocking it. Behind the wheel. Backing out of his space.”
“The blue Ford?”
“Nothing. Nobody there yet.”
I swiveled my head to look at the brown van as Brodsky’s voice continued. “Crown’s leaving the lot. Want me to follow?”
“Only if the drain cleaners do.”
“Roger.”
But the brown van didn’t move. I watched Jerry Crown’s gray van turn left and follow the frontage road north toward the main entrance. Neither the blue Ford sedan nor the brown surveillance van made any effort to follow. It wasn’t Crown they were here for. Suddenly I saw Kevin Finnerty striding toward his car.
“There he is now,” I told Brodsky. “Eleven o’clock. Coming this way.”
I slouched deeper in my seat as the ADIC made his way to his Mercury Marquis, unlocked it, and climbed in.
“Brown van’s backing out,” Brodsky said. “Blue Ford, too.”
The blue Ford left the lot first, followed several cars later by Finnerty’s Marquis, then, two cars after that, by the drain cleaners. I had to admire the way they were doing it, whoever the hell they were. The ahead-and-behind technique is a good one, especially when you have a pretty good idea where the target’s going. A lot less likely
for a watcher to get burned that way.
Brodsky trailed me out of the same lot, and the whole bunch of us rolled north on the frontage road, back toward the main entrance. The brown van followed Finnerty’s Marquis out of the zoo property and turned left on Adams Mill Road. We did the same thing. Suddenly I couldn’t see the blue Ford anymore.
“Ford must have turned right,” I told Brodsky. “You can catch it if you hurry.”
“Roger.”
On my own now, I concentrated on Finnerty and the drain cleaners.
Up ahead, the ADIC swung right onto Porter Street and followed it west toward Connecticut Avenue. The brown van dropped way back as it made the same move, in no obvious hurry to bumper-lock the ADIC. I pictured the intersection at Connecticut Avenue. The brown van had to know where Finnerty was going. If not, they were way too far back. This time of day the traffic on Connecticut was fierce. Miss the light, the van would never catch the ADIC again.
Maybe that’s where the blue Ford had gone, I told myself. The other way around on Adams Mill, to get in position to catch Finnerty if the van got stuck at the light. Again I had to admire the tradecraft. In a slipshod world, it was an unusual thing to see.
A few minutes later we were at the intersection of Porter and Connecticut. The light was red. Finnerty would turn left, of course, back toward WMFO, or toward his house in Kalorama Heights. Both were south of the intersection, and the brown van would follow.
The light changed to green. Finnerty’s Marquis was the third car through, turning left just as he should have. The van edged left to make the turn behind Finnerty but at the last moment veered to the right and whipped around the corner on Connecticut heading north. Directly away from Finnerty’s Marquis. I felt my stomach tighten as I recognized the most basic of antisurveillance techniques. They were dry-cleaning—in spook speak—and that meant they suspected someone to be following. Watching for someone to duplicate their reckless lane change. Leaving me no choice but to continue my turn in the wrong direction.
